Anyone can conduct effective user research. You just need to know how. The User Research for Everyone one-day virtual conference will show how to succeed with research that leads to products users want to use, buy, and recommend to friends.

Fifty seasoned professionals bring their diverse experience to a two-day studio, focusing their curiosity and creative energy on a question that is too complex for experts alone, and too important to ignore.

Empathy is a buzzword these days. But what does it really mean and how do you apply it to your work? In this seminar with Indi Young, author of the book Practical Empathy, you’ll learn the different types of empathy, how to develop it, and some tips for persuading the people around you to pay more attention to this powerful tool.

Whitney will demonstrate how designing for users from the outer edges of the bell curve results in amazing ideas and insights. She’ll share her tips for recruiting users with a wide range of disabilities, from physical to cognitive.

Many organizations go about their business half-informed. The human half of the picture is missing. Practical empathy helps fill in the missing knowledge. It leads to even greater confidence and clarity of direction.

Podcasts

How much do you want your socks to know about you? Should they alert you that they need to be repaired or be made of self-cleaning fibers? Or should they be able to go one step further and order you a new pair as soon as they’re worn out? Lou sits down with Liza Kindred, founder of Third Wave Fashion, to talk about wearables, tech, and how “me” commerce is leading the charge for mindful tech.

Leaving a UX legacy at an enterprise level requires stamina, courage, and grit. But the common denominator for creating a UX legacy is a surprising one: empathy. Lou talks with Colette Vardeman, Executive Director of Design at USAA, about her current experiences, past challenges, and what she’ll be covering as Theme Leader for Creating a Legacy at 2017’s Enterprise UX Conference.

What does an interdisciplinary enterprise team need to focus on to ensure customer satisfaction? Lou talks with Phillip Hunter, Head of UX at Alexa Skills, about the unique challenges of growing and leading enterprise UX teams to success. Phillip Hunter is the Theme Leader for Leading Teams That Execute at 2017’s Enterprise UX Conference.

What’s the difference between Customer Experience and User Experience? Are they working together to create a consistent experience with users of your products? Sarah Bloomer, former Director of Customer Experience and Insights at Forrester Research, talks to Lou Rosenfeld about what companies can do to build bridges between their Customer Experience and User Experience teams.

Designing apps that empower people to manage their own investments is a high stakes challenge. Steve Turbek, Head of User Experience Design at Fidelity Investments, shares how his team walks the tightrope between making easy to use products on the front end and processing complex transactions on the backend. And why having no finance background is a surprising asset for any UX designer.

Technology is unintentionally conspiring against you: making sure you only see more of what you like and agree with. How do we as a people expand our point of view when arguments are no longer productive? Dave Gray’s returns to talk with Lou Rosenfeld about how his latest book, Liminal Thinking, applies to Brexit and the recent U.S. election.

A couple of researchers walk into a bar. After a few drinks, they fess up their most embarrassing tales of research gone wrong. In this podcast, Steve Portigal talks about how that one night at the bar (and cat pee) sparked the idea for his book Doorbells, Danger, and Dead Batteries. Learn why Steve believes in the value of failure stories, and how he convinced a skeptical Lou to publish the book.

The Lean Product Playbook by Dan Olsen has revolutionized the way start-ups get their products to market. But what if you don’t work in a startup? Dan reveals to Lou Rosenfeld how the lean philosophy can be applied to companies of all shapes and sizes–even enterprises. Learn what the common challenges and solutions are to bringing the lean philosophy into an established company.

Most companies innovate backwards–focusing first on what features or products they can build. In reality, you’re in the relationship business. Authors Nathan Shedroff and Steve Diller talk about new tools they’ve developed to help businesses innovate with customer relationships in mind.

Throwing money at technology won’t automatically make your company more innovative or productive. So how do you pick the right tools for your organization? In this episode, Real Story Group founder Tony Byrne talks about what digital leaders need to do to make tech buying decisions that drive success.

Too often, companies take a “research band-aid” approach to user research. Fixing things over here that causes problems over there. Julie Stanford, founder of Sliced Bread Design, and talks about how to avoid playing Whack-A-Mole when researching and designing products.

Every company wants to make useful products that people want–but few really do. In today’s episode, Steve Krug, author of Rocket Surgery Made Easy, chats with guest host Laura Klein. Steve shares tips for setting up a successful usability test–and what two questions you should never ask during the test. Ever.

Does your company struggle to find and use video, audio, and image assets after you’ve created them? Do they disappear into a dark netherworld on your server? In this episode, Theresa Regli, author of Digital and Marketing Asset Management, breaks down what to ask before buying kludgy and expensive software. And which vendors rank highest on her list of otherwise lackluster DAM vendors.

Usability testing helps you find bugs in your product. But it can’t tell you if customers love your product. In this episode, UX Team Of One author Leah Buley talks about the insights under your nose that you probably aren’t using. And offers a realistic approach to rapid research and product development.

Erika Hall wants us to get one thing straight: getting research right isn’t about the method you choose. It’s about gathering research to make the right design decisions for your business. Hear Erika’s ideas for how to bake research into the product design process. And why every organization needs a “team philosopher.”

Erika Hall wants you to get one thing straight: getting research right isn’t about the method you choose. It’s about gathering research to make the right design decisions for your business. Hear Erika’s ideas for how to bake research into the product design process. And why every organization needs a “team philosopher.”

Cindy Alvarez knows how to go toe to toe with leaders who resist user research and still get it done. The author of Lean Customer Development shares tips from her experience for conducting research–even when you don’t have formal authority or budget.

As a designer since the early days of Flash, Val Head knows first hand how animation design has evolved to become a powerful tool for creating better user experiences. Hear Val’s insights from her book Designing Interface Animation––for how using motion to enhance your brand, and mobile UX.

Why was the F16’s requirements document one tenth as long as the F15’s, and yet the F16 took half as much time and money to develop? Dan Ward knows; he spent 20 years innovating within the US Air Force. He has advice you’ll want to hear on rapid innovation and how and why to keep projects small and simple.

We grabbed Boon Sheridan—a veritable Swiss Army knife of UX—and asked him that simple question that’s not really so simple: what do you know now that you wish you would have known when you started out in UX?

Lou talks to Mariano Suarez-Battan and Jim Kalbach of Mural.ly to discuss the state of User Experience Design, working solutions for distributed teams, and how design leaders can start putting together optimal solutions one piece at a time.

Look for Mural.ly to make an appearance at EnterpriseUX in San Antonio, June 8-10.
www.enterpriseux.net

Rackspace’s KC Teis sits down with Lou to share his perspective on leadership: his own story of growth and discovery, people he has seen blossom from unassuming designers into highly effective leaders, and, above all, the need to be an authentic, consistent and humane. 20 minutes of tremendous conversation.

KC’s organization Rackspace is a founding sponsor of Enterprise UX (www.enterpriseux.net). They will host the event for the second time June 8-10 at their beautiful headquarters in San Antonio.

Enterprise UX (www.enterpriseux.net) braintrust Uday Gajendar and Dave Malouf get together with Lou to talk us through the reasons that UX design needed a conference for enterpise, how they tackled the unique challenges of community building and programming posed by an emerging subset of the profession, and how they plan to keep from being ‘one hit wonders.’

Rosenfeld Author and delightful person Donna Lichaw comes on the podcast to talk about the significance of narratives in daily life and how that connects in a very significant way to the design professions.

Enterprise UX (www.enterpriseux.net) theme leader and super-nice Brooklynite Ted Booth talks through the process of designing for the multitudes. After hearing from Ted, you will never see your thermostat the same way again.

Lou and fellow Michigander/Information Architect Dan Klyn talk about carrying ideas and practices from their originators to a broader community of practice. Wurman, Alexander, and the elusive dream of an ordered, life-affirming digital information landscape.

Susan Worthman, Design stategist, writer and Associate Dean of the Design MBA program at Cal Arts talks Lou through the nuances and challenges of building and retaining a potent experience design team in a moment where that is a significant challenge. She will be a theme leader at Enterprise UX in San Antonio, June 8-10: www.enterpriseux.net.

Eminent design mind, USAA VP and Enterprise UX 16 theme leader Richard Dalton stops by to discuss Disney’s Magic Bands, the nuts and bolts of building a world-class design capability into an enormous 90-year-old company and the tenuous future of auto insurers in a world without car accidents. Richard will be a theme leader on “The Politcs of Innovation at Enterprise UX, June 8-10 in San Antonio www.enterpriseux.net

Jack Moffett, leader of the apps development group at GUI Immedius, talks to Lou about the importance of systems and standard practices for designing at scale when the stakes are high. Jack will be a theme leader at Enterprise UX 2016, June 8-10 in San Antonio.

It happens all too often: a beautifully designed product ends up loved and used by only few dozen people. Laura Klein talks with Lou about how UX designers and product managers can borrow ideas from growth hacking to grow a bigger base of users for the products they make. See a sneak peek into her upcoming book, Build Better Products.

Lou and longtime friend Steve Krug exchange opinions about their new wearables: Lou’s fitbit and Steve’s Apple Watch. Hear which wearable earns a thumbs down, why Steve thinks wearables will become a game changer, and Lou’s idea for how the fitbit could aid stressed out cat owners.

Empathy is a hot conversation topic these days but much as we try, we’re not quite using our empathy muscles to their fullest extent when solving design problems for real people. Indi Young, author of Mental Models and Practical Empathy talks about how our assumptions can lead us astray. Find out more about how Indi’s work can help you.

Well-crafted UX depends on having a company culture that’s set up to design well. Can you influence the culture of your company? Yes. Marc and Lou discuss three unique approaches to culture change happening in corporations like IBM and Citrix today. This is a preview into a panel Marc will lead on Designing Organizational Culture at Enterprise UX in San Antonio (May 13-15). Get tickets at www.enterpriseux.net or follow along on Twitter at @enterpriseUX.

Steve and Lou dig into the challenges of learning about people who engage with enterprises—how to gather data, and how to synthesize that data to get to something like true insight. Insight at Scale is a major theme at the upcoming Enterprise UX 2015 conference (San Antonio, May 13-15), where Steve will dig deeper into the subject along with Kelly Goto, Christian Rohrer, and Chris Chapo.

Chris Avore and Lou Rosenfeld talk about their upcoming conferences: Pro/Design in New York City on January 30 (hosted by Nasdaq) and Enterprise UX in San Antonio on May 13-15 (hosted by Rosenfeld Media and Rackspace).